Rangers walking through the bush. In rainy season, the grass can reach 12 ft high
World Ranger Day: By:Katherine Johnston - Communications were hurtling towards extinction due to endemic poaching. In the 1970s Manager, Save the Rhino International and ‘80s, demand for illegally poached Photos: Tristan Vince rhino horn boomed: both in Yemen, where it was used to fashion decorative dagger handles, and in Asia, for use in st he 31 July is World Ranger Day, traditional Chinese medicine. In 1998, a time to celebrate the personal courage several years after the last confirmed and – all too often – commemorate the sightings, Zambia’s black rhinos were sacrifice made by wildlife rangers in the officially declared extinct.
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line of duty. In North Luangwa National Park, rangers work round the clock to protect Zambia’s only black rhino population.
In the 1960s Zambia’s black rhino population was the third largest on the continent, and their traditional stronghold the vast ecosystem of North Luangwa National Park. And yet just two decades later, Zambia’s rhinos
In 1986 a partnership between the Zambian Wildlife Authority and Frankfurt Zoological Society created the North Luangwa Conservation Project, with the ultimate aim of conserving the unique ecosystem. With improved security, poaching came under control, and the conservation team started restoring the park’s habitats, working towards a future where local communities benefit from the economic Dean Bwale is a wildlife ranger in North opportunities wildlife brings. Cementing this vision, in 2003, the first rhinos Luangwa National Park. Growing up, were reintroduced to a heavily protecthe remembers learning that Zambia’s ed area of North Luangwa. Today, Dean rhinos had been slaughtered: “In the past we have lost a lot of animals here leads an anti-poaching unit protecting the rhinos from the ever-present threat in North Luangwa. We had lost all our of poaching. rhinos and that impacted on the community. We live together with nature, so if you destroy our nature, In the last decade, over 1,000 rangthen we are destroying our own lives.” ers worldwide have lost their lives in
GIVING ZAMBIA’S RHINOS A SECOND CHANCE 28
TRAVEL & LEISURE ZAMBIA
Paimolo inspects a rhino footprint
MEET THE RANGERS
